Tākaka marble (also known as Kairuru marble) is a marble found in the area around Tākaka in the northern South IslandofNew Zealand. It comes from number of quarries on Tākaka Hill and the Holyoake Valley nearby,[1] which form part of the Tākaka Terrane.
Impurities differ from place to place. Each of the quarries producing『Tākaka marble』thus gives a differently coloured marble, ranging from white to pink or grey, and sometimes almost black.[1] Kairuru marble is a coarse-grained marble which polishes to a lustrous finish.[2]
Quarrying began at Kairuru (on the southeastern, Nelson side of the hill) in the early 1900s,[3] and in 1911[4] was chosen for use in Wellington’s Parliament Buildings.[1] No blasting was involved in getting the marble.[2]The heavy marble blocks for the parliament were transported via a tramline down a steep hillside for 10.4 kilometres (6.5 mi) to Mārahau, where they were loaded onto scows, to be taken to Wellington for cutting.[2] A total of 5000 tonnes of marble had been quarried at Kairuru by the time of completion of the Parliament Buildings in 1922.[3]
Later, the same quarry provided marble for the Massey Memorial in Wellington, and for decorative features in the Beehive in the 1970s,[3] and for Christ Church Cathedral in Nelson.[4]
The new Kairuru quarry, in the Holyoake Valley, had become the main producer by 2005. It produces a coarse, crystalline marble with orange veins and irregular staining,[1] and is chiefly used for sculpture.[2]
Ngarua quarry is known for white, orange, grey marble and golden calcite, but much of the marble from this quarry was used to make crushed lime. Pink marble came from a quarry in the lower Riuwaka Valley, while grey marble came from the Marble Mountain Quarry above Kairuru.[4]
